


This Moment of Grief

by WorryinglyInnocent



Series: Homeward Bound [2]
Category: Lost
Genre: AU, Canon Divergence, Fix-it fic, Gen, Oceanic Six Claire, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 10:44:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13362987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Continuing theHomeward Boundseries, a canon divergence in which Claire left the island in the season four finale and became part of the Oceanic Six, raising Aaron herself.On Penny's boat the day before they leave for their official rescue, Desmond gives Charlie's Greatest Hits to Claire, and she and Hurley grieve the loss of a heroic friend.





	This Moment of Grief

A small part of Claire never wants to get off Penny’s boat. Here on this little floating sanctuary, she’s safe from everything that the world might want to throw at her, and she wants to remain hidden here under Penny’s motherly, watchful eye for as long as possible. But that means shunning her responsibilities in the outside world, and it’s not fair on her family or her son to hide away like this, however tempting it might be. Everyone thinks she’s dead, and whilst she’d like a completely fresh start, she doesn’t know how she’s going to go about getting one. She will just have to face the music, just like every other member of their select little group. Again, Claire thinks of the island and the people left behind. Sawyer and Miles were the ones to get her to where she is now and they’re now stuck… where, exactly? She never did get the chance to thank them for whatever it was that they did that she can’t remember, but she can tell they did something.

A little way from her, Jack and Kate are going over the intricacies of the lie they’ll have to weave when they get back to civilisation. For her part, Claire’s contribution is pretty simple: crash, island, give birth, try to keep baby and self alive, rescue. No-one’s going to mention the polar bears. Claire feels Jack is making the entire thing too complex, but as long as he does all the talking, she really doesn’t care. She can stick to her little part of the story.

Presently, Desmond sits down beside her. It’s been quite astonishing to see the change in him over these past couple of days on the boat, because outwardly he looks no different, but there’s so much genuine joy and happiness about him that it’s almost infectious, and his presence helps to lift Claire’s sense of impending doom a bit. It’s not a case of ‘everything’s going to be all right’ so much as ‘everything’s not going to be as terrible as it could be’. There’s a sombreness in his mood today though, and it reminds Claire more of the man he was on the island, trying desperately to save Charlie’s life until the one inevitable time that he could not.

“Claire…” He tails off before he’s even begun. “Can I talk to you about Charlie?”

The memories of Charlie are still painful, but they’re less painful than some others, Claire finds. At least Charlie is in a better place and he died a hero. She nods, and Desmond draws out a piece of paper from his shirt pocket: dry but delicate from taking a battering and irretrievably water-stained. It’s a wonder that the thing hasn’t turned into dust.

“When we went out to the Looking Glass, Charlie was writing this,” Desmond continues. “He wanted me to give it to you. He’d accepted what was going to happen down there.”

Claire nods. “He knew you couldn’t keep saving him forever.”

“Yeah.” Desmond’s pause shows that there’s clearly more to it than that, and Claire looks at him, probing for the truth in the same way she did when he’d told her about his visions in the first place.

“Desmond, please just tell me. The rest of my life is going to be one lie after another and I want the truth now.”

“I saw you,” Desmond says eventually. “I saw you and Aaron on the helicopter after I saw Charlie drown in the Looking Glass.”

“He sacrificed himself to make sure the vision didn’t change and we got away,” Claire surmises. Desmond nods grimly and Claire eyes the shabby paper. “Is it some kind of suicide note?”

“No.” Desmond’s smile returns, if only for a moment. “No, I think it’s something more positive than that.”

Claire takes the paper and unfolds it carefully. She’s surprised by how much of the writing is still legible, but even Sharpie will smudge with the soaking that this particular note has taken. Charlie’s greatest hits, the best parts of his life.

_The first time we heard ourselves on the radio._

Claire smiles. She’d never heard of Drive Shaft before she’d met Charlie, but she knows how much the band meant to him, and it must have been such a wonderful moment, to know that they were at last making a mark on the world.

_Dad teaching me to swim at Butlins._

That one is a little more bittersweet, considering that she knows how the story ends. Claire really doesn’t want to think about swimming or water just now. She wonders if Charlie knew exactly what was going to happen when he made this list, or if it was only an impression.

_The Christmas Liam gave me the ring._

Claire had always assumed that the ring was a result of Drive Shaft, not the other way around. She remembers that time that Charlie told her it was a family heirloom, and that Liam had given it to him back in the days before the heroin, reasoning that Charlie was more likely to be a responsible dad. Charlie had been bitter at the time he told her the tale, as Liam had gone on to be the one to become a responsible dad after all. For the first time, Claire thinks about looking up Liam Pace after she returns to Sydney, and telling him how much of a hero his younger brother was. For some reason it’s very important to her that Liam doesn’t think that Charlie died a junkie with no prospect of doing something good with his life. And in the end, Claire thinks, glancing over at Penny, who is holding Aaron for a bit, Charlie did end up being a good dad, to a child that wasn’t even his. She gave up thinking of Thomas as Aaron’s father a long time ago, and even though it’s only recently that she’s begun thinking of him as such, Charlie slipped into a father figure role with Aaron as if he was born to it. Perhaps Liam was right in a way, after all.

_A woman in Covent Garden called me a hero._

Oh Charlie… Tears are already pricking Claire’s eyes as she reads and she wipes them away. Charlie has done so much that can be called heroic, his final act notwithstanding. As infuriating as he had been at times, trying to be her personal hero when she hadn’t needed one, his heart and his intentions had almost always been in the right place, and the demons he was facing must have made it difficult. And it was the small things in the end. Peanut butter, breakfast in bed. The times he recognised when she just couldn’t cope with Aaron on her own and he stepped in without fanfare to help her out and let her get some much-needed sleep. Charlie’s always been a hero, and maybe she didn’t tell him often enough, but she honestly thought that he knew.

“Are you all right?” Desmond’s voice pulls her back into the present momentarily. “Stupid question, I know, but…”

Claire nods, and reaches out to stop him as he gets up to leave her in peace.

“No, please, stay.”

Desmond dutifully remains, and Claire turns her attention back to the paper, and Charlie’s greatest hit.

_The night I met you._

Claire remembers that night all too well.

_“First plane crash?”_

_“How did you guess?”_

_“You can always spot the newbies.”_

The memory makes her smile, just as Charlie made her smile back then when he was meeting her for the first time. They had both been terrified out of their minds, desperate for rescue, and after her false labour in the immediate aftermath of the crash, Claire had been plagued by the idea of having to give birth on a godforsaken jungle island in the middle of nowhere. That her fears had eventually come true is beside the point. Charlie’s humour had seen her through, just as it had seen her through so many moments of self-doubt.

_“You don’t scare me.”_

_“Best bloody peanut butter I’ve ever tasted.”_

_“What separates us from these savage yanks if we can’t drink tea?”_

_“One sugar plum fairy, two sugar plum fairy…”_

_“Turniphead.”_

It’s in that moment that Claire realises in a rush of cold emptiness just how much she could use Charlie’s sense of humour now, as she’s about to embark on one of the most terrifying unknowns she’s ever encountered. She had never really made any plans for after she’d had the baby in LA and returned home. Any nebulous future she’d thought of no longer exists, swept away by the events of the island. The lump in her throat is almost painful, and she swallows it down.

“Thank you, Desmond.”

He gives her shoulder a reassuring squeeze, and this time, when he makes to leave her in peace with her own thoughts, she lets him go.

She doesn’t cry immediately. She curls up on herself on the bench, hugging her knees, her eyes glued to that piece of tatty paper, reading and re-reading the few words over and over, her mind steeped too deep in memories, the good and the bad, to pay much attention to her surroundings or to the torrent of emotions that’s building up inside. Around her, there’s a lot going on that she needs to pay attention to, because tomorrow they are coming up on an inhabited island and they’ll be off Penny’s boat and on their own once more. There are things to be planned, back stories to be ironclad, and despite being all but lost at sea, Claire has no time to grieve just then.

 It’s later, once Aaron is sleeping soundly in a plastic box padded with blankets and pillows, that the dam finally breaks and the floods of tears for everything that she lost when she lost Charlie come out. She cries and cries, for the injustice of the world and the fact she should be happy to finally leave this most traumatic part of her life behind her, but all she can feel is this profound sadness. It’s testament to the fact Aaron really can sleep through anything as he remains undisturbed for her wailings.

At last, once she’s cried herself dry, she becomes aware that she’s not alone on this little part of the boat where she sits so often. Hurley’s shadow is stretched down the deck and she peers around the corner to find him standing there, a little awkward and sheepish.

“Sorry,” he says. “I heard you crying and I came to see if you were ok, then I thought you might want to be alone, so I just kind of hovered.”

Claire beckons him over and pats the bench beside her.

“I miss Charlie,” she says simply. Hurley nods.

“I miss him too.”

They stay in silence for a long time, thinking about all the people they’ve lost and all the people they’ve as good as lost, and all the people whose fate they’ll never really know. Aaron stirs a little in his makeshift crib, and Claire picks him up on instinct. She envies his innocence, and his blissful ignorance of all the terrible things that have happened around him. When he gets older, she hopes he won’t need therapy. Not that therapy’s going to be on the cards for her, either. She can’t exactly talk about what really happened: they’d send her straight to an institution. She glances at Hurley and wonders whether he feels the same way. Maybe they can all be a support network for each other; God knows they all need someone to talk to about what happened.

Hurley puts an arm around her and they continue to sit in silence for a while as Aaron goes back to sleep.

“You know, I think one of the worst things about all this is that the world will never know what he did for us,” Claire says eventually, and she gives a huff of bitter laughter. “I know it’s so stupid that I’m complaining about something when really I should just be grateful that we’re out of there and that we get to go home and go back to our lives, but how can we? After everything that’s happened, all those horrible things that we experienced, everyone we’ve lost… How can we ever be the same again?”

“We won’t be,” Hurley says. “There’s no way we can be. But Jack’s right. We have to lie to protect everyone else. And I mean, we all know the truth, and that’s what matters deep down, right?”

Claire nods. Jack makes a point with their need for secrecy and Hurley makes a more meaningful one in that the people that really matter will always know the truth. But that doesn’t make it any easier to bear Charlie’s noble sacrifice, because her silence will not protect him, it’s already too late for that. She thinks through her relationship with him, from that first night on the beach with the wreckage of the plane behind them, through all the many ups and downs, to that last kiss they shared. With a jolt of pain deep in her guts, Claire realises that Charlie probably knew that was going to be their last kiss. She glances down at the pocket of her jeans, where Charlie’s last message to her sits, safe. It’s not something that she will ever let go of if she can help it. Charlie was a hero, and she’s not going to let anyone tell her any differently. Even with the truth tamped down hard and only the barest minimum available to furnish their lies and omissions, she can still make sure that Charlie is remembered as the hero she knows he is, and the hero she never had the chance to tell him that he was.


End file.
